On the road

It was handed to me with great reverence, this volume of a few hundred pages. In retrospect, it was a boy trying to impress me in high school, making a ceremony of his knowledge of this subculture of poets and junkies, dreamers and mad saints. Small town girl that I was (guys I went to high school did not talk like this), I was duly impressed. And then, somehow, it became this thing among my girlfriends and me – passing around copies of On the Road, listening to scratchy recordings of Allan Ginsburg reading Howl, quoting lines from San Francisco Blues and dividing boys that we met into two categories: they were either Jack Kerouacs (sensitive poet dreamer types) or Neal Cassadys (wild men a.k.a. “bad boys”). My obsession followed me into college and then faded away as, sad to say, I found that work and life in general got in the way of wiling away the hours on the words of others.

Jack Kerouac taught me to love the open road. To see the dividing line as an invitation to adventure. The habit I picked up in high school of taking long rides to dissipate stress, anger, sadness and general malaise is something I still like to do. Throw on some tunes, roll down the window and shake it off. As Neal Cassidy embodied by Dean Moriarity said in On the Road, “. . . there’s no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we’re not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.”

So, the other night, when I felt like I couldn’t handle one more minute of ______ (names and events have been omitted to protect the not-so-innocent), I got in the car and drove. It was dark, so the views weren’t great, but Emmylou Harris was singing and I was by myself. All was good. I found myself in Lake George and pulled into Monty’s. They were getting ready to close (I was told this politely, by the way) and after mentioning that I was looking for a white wine, was directed to their “already-chilled” section. I know the feeling of trying to close (relatively) on time, so not seeing anything that I like in the pinot grigio/chardonnay/sauvignon blanc sections, I quickly moved onto the rosés. I didn’t get a chance to see what they had in the bins, but the chilled selection wasn’ttoo vast (i.e., a lot of California white zins).

I ended up with the M. Chapoutier Belleruche Rosé. Mostly Grenache with some Syrah and Cinsault. It was around $14 and a pretty pale pink. With nothing to go on but that, it ended up first in a brown paper bag, then in my fridge for a few minutes to re-chill it and finally, in my glass. Verdict: a little tart on the first sip, it mellowed into something that was both light and warm at the same time.